Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Much Ado about...finish the sentence

I may be on winter break but that will not stop me from blogging or working on humor.

"Lazy Sunday" is the next Cowbell sketch since just about everyone is talking about it. Even an article coming from CT...

For most aspiring rappers, the fastest route to having material circulated around the World Wide Web is to produce a work that is radical, cutting-edge and, in a word, cool. But now a pair of Saturday Night Live performers turned unexpected hip-hop icons are discovering that Internet stardom may be more easily achieved by being as nerdy as possible.

In "Lazy Sunday," a music video that had its debut on the Dec. 17 broadcast of SNL, two cast members, Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, adopt the brash personas of head-bopping, hand-waving rappers. But as they make their way around Manhattan's West Village, they rhyme with conviction about subjects that are anything but hard-core: They boast about eating cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, searching for travel directions on MapQuest and achieving their ultimate goal of attending a matinee of the fantasy movie "The Chronicles of Narnia."

It is their obliviousness to their total lack of menace that makes the video so funny, but it is the Internet that has made it a hit. Since it was originally broadcast on NBC, "Lazy Sunday" has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times from the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com, and it has cracked the upper echelons of the video charts at the iTunes Music Store. "I've been recognized more times since the Saturday it aired than since I started on the show," said Samberg, 27, a featured player in his first season on SNL.

But Samberg is already well aware of the Internet's power to transform relative unknowns into superstars. In 2000, when he and his childhood friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, both 28, who wrote "Lazy Sunday" with Samberg and Parnell, were still struggling comedy writers living together in Los Angeles, they created a Web site, the Lonely Island, to house their self-produced skits and video experimentations.

Someone sent me the video as I refuse to use iTunes. Also makes me wonder as to whether or not I should start up my own comedy writing blog or continue to use this for that purpose. I'm still going to blog here and the focus on politics will remain whether or not I go the comedic route.

It's easy and startling to see MySpace.com grow. Just log in at peak traffic times, click the "refresh" button on your Web browser, and watch the number of members jump by the 4,000 or 5,000 users who just registered. That explosive growth soon will push MySpace's membership to 42 million — and the site is less than 2 years old.

It's that vast reach that helped take comedian Dane Cook from relative obscurity a year ago to hosting Saturday Night Live.

I signed up last year and I do have Dane Cook as a friend on MySpace.

Alan Colmes does indeed have a backbone. It was not broken recently when two members of the right wing lost a fight to the law.

Alan Colmes was in rare form last night during a Hannity & Colmes discussion of Bush’s unauthorized spying on Americans. FOX News tried to frame the discussion as a national security debate but Colmes and civil rights attorney Michael Gross refused to budge from the position that the issue is about following the law.

The Hannity & Colmes website makes it pretty clear that FOX News is trying to spin the controversy away from Bush's illegal actions. "Will there be a Congressional investigation into who leaked the NSA secret spying story? Should there be? Isn't this story just as important as the Valerie Plame/CIA leak?"[...]

Then it was Alan Colmes’ turn. He started off by demanding, "Tell me, exactly, what law or cite the passage of the Constitution that gives the president the right to do this without a warrant. Where is that? I’d like to know."

Christie started to explain that Article 2 of the Constitution grants the president the power to protect and uphold the Constitution.

"You’re avoiding the issue… The Fourth Amendment is the operative Amendment here and you don’t want to acknowledge that it talks about warrants specifically." He added that Tom Daschle has stated that the president had sought "domestic capability," had been denied it by Congress, then did it anyway.

I'm split on this issue. I like Jon Stewart as a comedian. I'd like to see his late night show brought to CBS or one of those but ABC failed the last time and ended up with Jimmy Kimmel. However, look at what the Indy Star wishes for.

12. Our wish list: That once ABC kills the terrible new version of Nightline, the network gives that valuable slot to Jon Stewart and his Daily Show crew. That we never have to hear, read, see or otherwise experience any coverage of Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie or any of the cast members of Laguna Beach in 2006. That all of our favorite shows are available on demand, for free, all the time, anywhere.

Will he run? This is the Big One. Will Evan Bayh make it official? Will he take the chance of chances and make a run for the White House? He's been running unofficially for months, traipsing lately through key nomination states such as New Hampshire and Iowa. But until now, he's just been one of many politicians gauging their chances.

By the end of 2006, we should know more. Bayh has said repeatedly he will make his decision after November.

He's already proved himself capable of raising money. But next year, he needs to find a way to distinguish himself from the pack. That could be difficult for Mr. Careful. A fight against video games isn't going to sway the party's most faithful. But he is clearly a credible contender. We'll see whether his likable call for a less divisive America sells.

A dog who took the Senate floor many years ago has passed away. I offer my condolences.

An objection had been raised -- anonymously at the time -- by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), a stickler for procedure. The Senate had no formal rule allowing guide dogs into its chamber.

It had, however, voted two years earlier to require Congress to live by the workplace rules it had imposed on other employers. Those include the Americans With Disabilities Act, which guarantees that workers with guide dogs can bring them to the office under most circumstances.

It soon became clear that any argument for excluding Beau from the chamber was a dog.

Wyden quickly introduced a resolution to allow disabled people to bring "supporting services," including dogs, onto the floor.

"A guide dog is a working dog, not a pet," Wyden said from the Senate floor. "...I had hoped that there would be no need to offer this resolution, but I am forced to because discrimination still persists here."

Other senators rallied to the cause. The next day, the Senate passed a resolution by then-Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) opening the door to Beau and setting in motion a rules change permitting service dogs in the chamber.

"He was a really excellent guide dog," Shea, 50, now a communications manager at the Government Printing Office, said the other day. "He was very stoic, very professional, very aloof. He had a charisma. He just had something about him that I've never seen in another dog...He developed a following. People react[ed] to him."

Are my Chicago readers looking for something to do this Saturday evening? Then check out that link to see what's happening at the improv theatres.

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Some info:Though a Kentucky Wildcats, St. Louis Cardinals and Indianapolis Colts fan, The Kentucky Democrat is currently based in Chicago. Solzman is a social commentator on sports, politics, and entertainment. Solzman currently writes a number of book reviews for The Kentucky Democrat in the categories of sports, humor, entertainment, politics, American history, and select fiction and science-fiction.

If you would like for Solzman to review a book, please feel free to get in touch with her. Kentucky Wildcats: 2012 National Champions St. Louis Cardinals: 2011 World Series Champions! Boston Celtics: 2008 World Champions! Indianapolis Colts: 2007 Super Bowl Champions
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